The last traces of sunset bled away into utter stillness.
Only the wind's moan through gaps in the ruined hut and the weeping-like shhh-shhh-shhh from the bamboo forest behind the house remained.
The faint, sickly-sweet scent of decay that had lingered during the day now thickened noticeably, clinging to the skin with a clammy, cold dampness.
Wang Yan stood with his back to the gaping, dark doorway.
He placed a short bronze sword (its form ancient, seemingly not meant for battle), just retrieved from an oilcloth wrap, onto a stone block.
His eyes scanned the doorframe, the broken windows, the doorway he had laboriously barricaded and reinforced.
No matter how tightly blocked, cracks remained. The darkness itself seemed alive, seeping through those fissures.
"Master?" Li Ke's voice, tight with barely suppressed tension, cut sharply through the silence.
"Silence. Tend the fire," Wang Yan commanded without turning, his voice low but clear. "I'm circling the hut. The bamboo grove behind us... it's wrong." The word "wrong" carried the weight of icy vigilance.
Wang Yan moved swiftly. From his worn, smooth leather bundle, he carefully extracted an oilpaper packet.
First Defense: The Moat of Rice!
He opened the packet, revealing plump, snow-white glutinous rice (in Chinese lore, like cinnabar, rice wards off malignant spirits).
His expression solemn, he started at the southwest corner of the stone hut – closest to the bamboo forest. Pinching a small amount of rice between thumb and forefinger, he began walking steadily around the hut's perimeter, about ten feet out from its foundation, meticulously scattering the grains.
He sowed with intense focus.
This wasn't just drawing a line. The grains overlapped and connected, eventually forming a distinct, dense white barrier encircling the hut! Particularly near the shadowy bamboo grove, the white rice on the ground formed a noticeably thicker band, almost a handspan wide.
Sweat beaded at his temples. This wasn't physical exertion, but the burning of pure concentration. Facing the utterly unknown, every step required him to mentally map the potential paths of the unseen threat.
Second Defense: The Seal of Cinnabar!
With the rice barrier laid, Wang Yan produced a small porcelain jar and a stack of pre-cut yellow talisman paper. Unscrewing the jar released a unique, dry mineral scent – high-grade cinnabar! Using a fine brush, he loaded it with the dark red powder.
Before the makeshift "door" blocked with planks – specifically on the lintel above – his gaze focused, wrist poised. He took a deep breath, then his brush flew!
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Three talismans completed in a single breath!
Each stroke carried forceful intent. The dark red lines, illuminated by the dim firelight, twisted and coiled into patterns radiating potent warning. Three talismans – top, middle, bottom – sealing the door's most critical points.
Third Defense: Hidden Eyes and Ears!
His work wasn't done. From the depths of his bundle, he retrieved several small items:
Strands of deep red thread, fine as hair, strung with tiny golden bells (their chime imperceptible to normal ears). He carefully stretched these taut across low branches near the bamboo grove – unavoidable "tripwires" for any living thing.
A palm-sized fragment of exceptionally smooth, polished bronze mirror. He wedged this fragment into a high crevice in the stone wall, its surface tilted slightly to face the path from the bamboo grove to the hut! Where firelight failed, this ancient mirror would reflect any anomalous movement.
The entire defense took less than half an hour, yet Wang Yan felt drained. He returned to the fire, his back soaked with sweat plastering his shirt to his skin. The firelight danced across his sharply defined face, etching the lingering gravity in his eyes.
The modest fire crackled, fighting back the hut's pervasive damp chill. Master and disciple chewed on coarse grain cakes for sustenance. The food tasted like ashes.
"Listen, Ke'er,"
Wang Yan's voice broke the monotonous chewing. He prodded the fire with an iron rod, but his eyes never left the dark doorway or the distant bamboo grove. "This fire must not go out. Guard it. Let its light only cover this corner we're in. Do not try to use it to search the darkness! That's suicide! Understood?"
Li Ke nodded vigorously, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed the dry, gritty paste.
Wang Yan's gaze shifted to the barricaded door, his talismans, and the rice line: "That line of rice… you step not one foot beyond it!"
"But… what if…?" Li Ke couldn't help but ask.
"There is no 'what if'!"
Wang Yan snapped his head around.
The firelight blazed in his eyes like torches. "Unless I call you! Unless that thing breaks the defenses and is upon you!"
His gaze locked intensely onto Li Ke's, each word deliberate: "Where's the 'Calming Grain' I gave you?" (That acrid, bitter pill).
Li Ke's hand instinctively clutched the small pouch at his waist. He nodded firmly.
"Remember the incantation,"
Wang Yan whispered, his voice almost inaudible. "'Spirit scattered, form held fast; All bones find peace at last!'" His eyes bored into the boy's.
"Feel something wrong? Pop it under your tongue immediately! Hold it there! Don't chew it! Don't swallow it!"
Li Ke's mouth flooded with a bitter taste – fear and pressure. He nodded again, his fingertips pressing through the rough cloth to feel the cold, hard outline of the tiny pill.
[Li Ke's Inner Monologue]
The firelight barely clung to the ground around Master and my feet. Beyond that was bottomless black. The fire's shadow danced on the wall, stretching long like a ghost on tiptoes. Master's face, half-lit, looked terrifyingly stern.
I remembered the back mountain of Li Family Hollow… That night Grandpa died, it was black like this too. Dad and the others went out… never came back… what the torches finally found… I never want to see anything like that again!
The wind outside sounded like heavy breathing, like sobbing. The bamboo leaves rustled like a thousand claws scrabbling!
I wished I could shrink into Master's shadow. The grain in my pouch dug into my side. Spirit scattered… form held fast… All bones… find peace… I chanted the awkward words over and over in my head, a thousand times, ten thousand times.
Wang Yan seemed to sense the boy's trembling. He suddenly reached out. His calloused, yet warm hand rested on Li Ke's chilled neck and gently kneaded the muscles.
"Don't be afraid,"
his voice lowered, adopting a tone that belonged to a father.
"As long as I'm here, as long as this fire burns, as long as this circle holds… it cannot reach us quickly." His grip was strong, conveying solidity.
"You may doze, but don't lean your body beyond this fire's circle." Despite his words, he sat ramrod straight, head slightly cocked, listening intently, his foot tapping the ground almost imperceptibly, straining to catch the faintest sounds from outside.
The silence didn't last.
The "weeping" of the bamboo grove deepened in the dead of night.
It morphed into a sobbing shhh… shhh… shhh…, layered, shifting near and far. The sound drilled into their ears, like countless tiny insects crawling deep within the ear canal.
Then came more tangible sounds.
Flutter-flutter—! A faint rustle – something small (a bird? a rat?) startled from the undergrowth. It came precisely from the edge of the bamboo grove!
And then…
Shhh… shhh… shhh…
No longer the collective sway of bamboo.
It sounded like coarse fur dragging through dry leaves and grass! Slow. Deliberate. Emerging from the depths of the bamboo… inching… closer!
Wang Yan's hand on Li Ke's neck clenched! The boy's spine snapped rigid.
The sound stopped at the westernmost side of the hut – right where Wang Yan had concentrated the rice and strung the red thread.
A deathly silence descended. Even breathing was stifled.
Li Ke felt his heart hammering against his throat! He sensed Master's body tense like steel, coiled and ready!
Suddenly!
Skreee—!
A faint, yet piercingly sharp scraping sound!
Like sharp claws dragged heavily… across rough, uneven stone!
After the sound, another long silence fell. The suffocating pressure seemed to ease… slightly.
For the rest of the night, the thing seemed to test, to prowl. The fur-dragging shhh… shhh… shhh… sounded several times, each time from a different direction outside the defensive ring.
Once, it came perilously close to the red thread and bell strung across a broken window gap. Wang Yan even caught a whiff of rank, animal musk – the thing was less than five meters beyond the wall! The hand gripping the bronze short sword showed white knuckles.
Li Ke, jolted by each fresh wave of terror, clutched the "Calming Grain" in his pocket, silently chanting the incantation on repeat, a sheen of cold sweat on his brow.
In the agony of the long wait, the sky struggled to show the faintest grey sliver of dawn.
As the first pallid light pierced the darkness, just enough to see shapes, Wang Yan took a deep breath of the chill morning air.
He stepped cautiously beyond the fire's protective circle, out into the dew-covered, cold dampness outside the stone hut. He began meticulously inspecting the white rice barrier he'd laid with such care the night before.
He first checked the red thread bells and the bronze mirror fragment – untouched. The thing hadn't breached the core defenses.
But on the ground!At the western wall!
Closest to that dense, shadowed bamboo grove! There!
In the area he'd specially "reinforced" with a thick layer of white rice…
Clear impressions were sunk deep into the earth!
Footprints utterly unlike those of any ordinary forest creature!
Claw prints! Vaguely feline in structure – one large central pad mark deeply indented, surrounded by several smaller toe impressions! Four? Five?
The outlines were blurred, chaotic!
Horrifying Size: The central pad alone was larger than a grown man's hand! A testament to the creature's immense size!
The impressions left by the tips of the toes were like deep, puncturing holes, as if driven in like fishhooks! Even the hard ground had been pierced!
Most chilling of all – some of the white rice grains near the claw prints, once pristine snow-white, were now stained a dirty grey-black! The grains had lost their luster and exuded a nauseating stench of decay! Proof of corruption by corpse-taint, by evil miasma!
Wang Yan slowly crouched. He extended a long finger, lightly brushing the clean white rice a few inches away from the grey-black claw print.
Beneath his fingertip, a needle-sharp wave of icy malevolence shot up his skin! He felt it clearly – a savage, feline wildness imbued with murderous evil!
This was no ordinary beast. Far more than some mountain goblin or forest sprite!
His expression settled into grim finality. The weak morning light now felt piercingly cold and harsh.